THE LIVING GAKMENT 47 



exquisite beauty of tliat chance green and rose-red 

 arrangement. But there were no other flowers. The 

 young shepherd, aged about fifteen, had one of those 

 perfectly Saxon faces which you see more in Sussex 

 than anywhere in England — a large round face, rosy 

 brown in colour, shy blue eyes and Ught brown hair, 

 worn long. The expression, the shy yet pleased look 

 — pleased that the monotony of his long solitary day 

 would be broken by this chance encounter with a 

 stranger — was childlike and very pretty. He had 

 loose-fitting grey clothes on, and a round grey peakless 

 cap ; and for ornament he had fastened in the middle 

 of it, where there had perhaps once been a top-knot 

 or ball, a big woolly thistle flower. It was really very 

 curious to note how that one big thorny flower-head 

 with its purple disc harmonised with everything about 

 the boy and gave him a strange distinction. 



Most of the colonising plants on the downs have, 

 as I have said, their period of greatest beauty in May 

 and June : the common field scabious is an exception. 

 Like the blue devil's-bit scabious it is also found on 

 the turf; but it flourishes chiefly (and on account of 

 its long stem is best suited to) the grass lands that 

 have once been tilled. In such locaUties it is very 

 common and outlasts all its neighbours of other 

 species, and a very pretty effect is sometimes produced 

 by that flower " blooming alone " when abundant in 

 the tall grass burnt yellow by the heats of July 

 and August. The pale mauve-blue of the flower and 



